Jawbone UP2, UP4 Fitness Bands announced with Built-in Mobile Payments

Today, Fitness wearable arena is seeing the launch of new bands. This time it’s the fitness wearable manufacturer, Jawbone, popular for its UP24 fitness band, company has come far enough to expand its products line-up more. The newly announced bands are UP4 and UP2, the most eminent of them is the UP4, which packs built-in mobile payments. Therefore, these bands are more than just for the fitness purpose.

Talking about the UP4, it is an upgrade from the UP3 that was launched last year. It is priced at $199, which a bit of costly side when compared to the current set of fitness bands available in the market right now. But this adds a mobile payment to justify the pricing, though, as previous UP3 was priced at $179. While this fusion of mobile payments and fitness feature was mostly limited to high-priced smartwatches like Apple Watch. It is good to see other firms make room for such technology on their products.

But there’s a catch here, the mobile payments can only be coupled with American Express cardholder. Then to take advantages of the UP4’s mobile payment features, you would have to become the American Express cardholder if you’re not. SO, if that issue is out of your way, then you just have to tap on the payment terminal in order to buy pay for the products at NFC enabled contact points.

While talking about the second product, the UP2, which excludes the fancy feature of mobile payment, is priced accordingly at $99. This move is to bring more fitness bands to the table, and thereby replacing the old products like discontinued UP24. It is also supposed to lie between the affordable UP Move (Read our Review) and more pricey UP3. The new UP2 is designed by Yves Behar, a swiss designer, and is admittedly 45%smaller than UP24, therefore making it lighter too. Company states that it can last up to seven days once fully charged. Moreover, the device is waterproof, and can track fitness data which then can be accessed through Jawbone’s app that includes Smart Coach features.

The UP2 is up for grab on company’s official website, while the Best Buy store will stock up the product later this weekend. Whereas the UP4 would begin shipping the device later this summer.

Source: Jawbone